Editing is perhaps the most fundamental of the arts and crafts which comprise the film production process. Editing gives the film maker control of time, which separates film from the other pictorial arts, and control of space and point of view, which separates film from the other theatrical arts. It is thus somewhat ironic that technical developments in the actual machinery of editing have lagged behind technical developments in other phases of motion picture production, particularly photography and sound recording. Vertically arranged editing equipment designed around the time of World War I is still in widespread use today, over 55 years later. The introduction of horizontal editing machines in Europe after World War II has taken more than 20 years to gain a substantial foothold on this side of the Atlantic.
Turning editing equipment "on its side" to achieve a basically horizontal layout would seem to be a trivial modification, more a matter of taste than of real improvement. What it allows, however, is for gravity to take over many of the tasks of keeping film and editing accessories in place that in vertical machines is performed by clips, flanges, and other mechanical contrivances. The horizontal table-top layout is also more convenient for most human operators because they are used to performing many activities at desks and tables. The savings in time realized can be measured in mere seconds or fractions for each operation, but the effect is all-pervasive. The cumulative time savings is substantial, and it occurs entirely in the manual labor area which most distracts from creative decision-making.
Perhaps one of the reasons for the slow acceptance of horizontal editing machines has been the specialized nature and high cost of the equipment. It is to these two factors that this invention addresses itself.
Editing may be the most creative of all the post-production processes, but it is not the only one which is necessary to achieve a finished production. Sound must be transferred and later mixed, picture must be projected, and from time to time even more mundane tasks such as rewinding, cleaning, and measuring film must be performed. In the past, a separate specialized piece of equipment was designed for each duty; a well-equipped was forced to sustain a large investment in equipment. Yet all the pieces of equipment perform tasks more remarkable for their similarities than for their differences; they take film from storage (usually in the form of a roll on a reel or core), move it at a well-controlled speed past a part of the machines (usually called the head) which performs some action upon or with the film, and replace the film into storage again. Conceptually, the only difference between machines is in the design of the heads. For example, a picture head enlarges the image on the film by front or rear projection onto a viewing screen of convenient size, while a sound head translates the magnetic or optical pulses recorded on the film into audible sound.
The rest of the machine might be called a film transport, A well-designed general-purpose film transport, such as is disclosed herein, has uncommitted space available for any of a number of modular special-purpose heads and is capable of performing most post-production tasks. It performs its various tasks without duplicating the film transport parts of the several machines which would otherwise be required to perform the same set of tasks. Since the film transport is in many cases the major cost of constructing a piece of film equipment, the savings can be substantial. There are, of course, the additional benefits which accrue because of the increased familiarity the operator obtains with his equipment by virtue of the major part of the machine being useful for several tasks.
Film production often requires the capability of interlocking two or more strands of film in exact frame-for-frame synchronism while being moved in either direction past one or another type of heads. A rational design for a film transport must thus allow for several such transports to be so arranged so as to achieve this capability with a minimum of additional parts and complication and a maximum of convenience and accessibility for the operator.
Finally, such a film transport must be cheap to manufacture. Quite aside from the considerations of volume which would allow a general-purpose transport to achieve economies of manufacture not possible with highly specialized small-volume machines, a well-designed transport must incorporate features such as simplicity, low parts count, inherent reliability, inexpensively manufactured special parts, and maximum use of aff-the-shelf or generally available components. Such features lead to inexpensive manufacture regardless of production volume.
All of the characteristics mentioned above are or have been available separately in various pieces of film equipment. Thus, a certain amount of modularity or multi-purpose usefulness has been available in expensive machinery; multi-strand capability has been available in expensive or in highly specialized equipment; and very low cost equipment is available only in specialized form mass-produced for the consumer market and totally unsuitable for general-purpose professional service.
The following description details a film transport which, because of its novel design, incorporates all the aforementioned desirable features of modular general-purpose usefulness, simple multi-strand interlock capability, and economy of manufacture. Several possible arrangements of multi-transport configurations are shown which are useful in all phases of the post-production process. The incorporation of this transport design into film post-production equipment will make the benefits of horizontal editing machines available to film producers at greatly reduced cost.